Joanna Hoffman facts for kids

Joanna Karine Hoffman (born July 27, 1955) is a smart and successful Polish-American marketing expert. She was one of the first people to work on two very important computer teams: the Apple Macintosh team and the NeXT team.

When Joanna started at Apple Computer, the Mac computer was still a new idea. She was the only person on the Macintosh marketing team for the first year and a half. This meant she helped design the Mac and even wrote the first ideas for how its user screen would look. Later, Joanna led the team that brought the Mac to countries in Europe and Asia.

Early Life and Education

Joanna Hoffman was born in Poland. Her father was a famous film director, Jerzy Hoffman. Her mother, Marlena Nazarian, was Armenian. Joanna lived with her mother in Armenia until she was 10 years old. Then, she moved to Warsaw, Poland, to live with her father.

In 1967, her mother married an American and moved to Buffalo, New York. Joanna joined them in the United States in 1968. She quickly learned to speak English very well and did great in school.

Joanna studied many interesting subjects. She has a degree in Humanities and Science from MIT. She also studied archaeology at the University of Chicago. In 1979, she planned to go to Iran for an archaeology dig. But because of the Iranian Revolution, she had to return to the United States.

Working with Computers

Joanna was taking a break from her studies when friends told her about a lecture at Xerox PARC in California. After the talk, she had a lively discussion with Jef Raskin. They talked about how computers should look and how they could make people's lives better. Raskin was so impressed that he asked her to interview for a job at Apple.

She joined the Macintosh project in October 1980. She was part of Raskin's first team, which included Burrell Smith, Bud Tribble, and Brian Howard.

Joanna was known at both Apple and NeXT as one of the few people who could successfully talk with Steve Jobs. In 1981 and 1982, she even won a funny award at Apple. It was given to "the person who did the best job of standing up to Jobs." Steve Jobs knew about the award and liked it!

In the early 1990s, Joanna was a vice president of Marketing at General Magic. She retired in 1995 to spend more time with her family. Sometimes, she gives talks about her early days at Apple and what it was like working with Steve Jobs.

In 2020, a Spanish artificial intelligence company called Sherpa hired her. She works there as a consultant and helps the company's founder and CEO, Xabi Uribe Etxebarria.

Family Life

Joanna Hoffman is married to Alain Rossmann. Alain is from France and also worked on the Mac team at Apple. They have two sons together.

See also

• In Spanish: Joanna Hoffman para niños